


At ease

by duesternis



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brain Injury, Fix-It, M/M, Magic Healing, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, cathedrals can be re-build, he's going to get better, its really centric around the good bois tho, should probably be a tag for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:21:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24651514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duesternis/pseuds/duesternis
Summary: He held the carving in his hand until it was warm, then he nestled it against Heather’s neck, the skin warm and alive to Tozer’s touch.Tozer was willing to go the extra mile and believe all kinds of things out here.With a spirit hunting them, maybe magic was all that could save them.
Relationships: Sgt Solomon Tozer/Pte William Heather
Comments: 14
Kudos: 22





	At ease

**Author's Note:**

> This is a birthday gift for @ thegoodthebadandtheart on tumblr!! Go check out their amazing blog for terror-content and awesome art!

"Sergeant."  
Tozer grinned into the wool muffler wrapped around his face and nodded.  
"Private. All quiet?" The ice groaned, crowding against the ship.  
"Except for that, yes it is." Heather grinned too, eyes wrinkling above his frosty muffler.

Tozer stood close to him, their shoulders rubbing, warmth pooling between them. Or maybe it was just Tozer’s imagination, what with the hundreds layers they were wearing. And it wasn’t even a real Arctic Winter yet.  
Yeah, complete with capital letters and all.  
One of the grumpy lieutenants passed them with a perfunctory nod and they nodded back.

"That’s which one?"  
"Little, I think, Solomon. You should know that by now. Saw him smile though, yesterday for the first time since we left the docks and let me tell you."  
Tozer nudged him with his elbow. "Go on."  
"The man probably isn’t even thirty yet." Heather was grinning again and he nudged Tozer back, jostling laughter straight out of him.  
"What, next the Captain is barely out of his thirties, Billy?"  
Heather laughed, wiping tears from his lashes before they froze his eyes shut. "Not a day above thirty when he laughs."

That sent Tozer again, breath coming in huge bursts of white and skin prickling with the moisture leaking from his eyes.  
Heather wiped his mittens over Tozer’s eyes, gentle, so very gentle.  
"Thanks," slily, one gloved hand patting Heather’s thickly packed side. Many layers indeed.  
"Anytime, Sergeant."  
Tozer huffed another laugh and clapped Heather warmly on the shoulder. "Go, get down and get warm."  
"Yes, sir. Stay safe."  
"I’m not gonna go for a swim, no worries there."

Heather chuckled and carefully navigated the slippery deck with sure steps. Tozer watched him descend the ladder and grinned in the privacy of his muffler.  
The lieutenant looked at him from the bow and Tozer nodded again, hand raised to the brim of his cap in an almost salute. The lieutenant – Little, Heather’s voice in his ear – nodded back and finished his rounds on the deck.  
The ice groaned and else quiet hung over their ship.  
Erebus was perfectly visible tonight and with half closed eyes Tozer could imagine they were only anchored for the night, sails down, ready to be raised come morning.

"Remember England, Billy?"  
Tozer sat at Heather’s bedside, one of his big hands cradled between both of Tozer’s. Still warm, cooled only by keeping still so long.  
He kneaded the skin and flesh, moving the blood, keeping the tender digits alive and healthy.  
"Remember? The wind in the fields? Birds singing every morning?"  
Heather breathed deeply, chest moving faintly under his blanket.  
Tozer put a hand over it, feeling the steady beat of Heather’s heart against his palm. Unbidden his eyes trailed over the exposed throat, the beard he was barely managing to keep in shape, the eyes held shut with wax and then.  
And then.

The cauterized edge of a wound so terrible Tozer had no words for it. And beyond it the gentle, deceptively small, curve of Heather’s brain.  
Tozer had seen brain before.  
At the butchers.  
On battlefields. Well, never so intact on battlefields.  
He lifted his hand from Heather’s chest and touched his forehead.

"Billy."  
Cupped his cheek, beard stiff and coarse against his palm.  
"Bill."  
Squeezed the hand he still held gently.  
"William."

No reaction.

For a moment Tozer closed his eyes and willed the burning behind his eyelids to ebb. He wouldn’t cry.  
Not when Heather still breathed, still lived. There was no need for tears and they wouldn’t help either way.  
The door slid open behind Tozer and the Doctor stepped in quietly.  
They nodded at each other and Tozer turned back to Heather, still cupping his cheek tenderly. He muttered a curse and whipped his hand back, cheeks flushing: The doctor had seen him like that, like some lady crying at the bedside of her sweetheart.

Tozer glanced at Heather, half expecting his eyes to open and an insufferable grin to spread on his round face.  
_"Now, now, Solomon,"_ he would say and laugh, _"No need to be shy. We’re friends, aren’t we?"  
_Tozer swallowed and gave Heather’s hand a firm press again. "I’ll see you tomorrow, Private."  
Then he carefully arranged the blanket, smoothed the pillow and left the sick room with a nod for the Doctor.

"What are you doing?"  
Steel-edged was too soft an expression for Tozer’s voice when he came upon one of the crew bent low over Heather’s prone form.  
The small man turned around, a smile transforming his face into the devilish mask from a comedy. There was no joy in the expression and no honesty.  
"Just checking up on the private, sir."  
"Step away now, Mr Hickey, or I’ll make it so you can’t take another for the rest of your life."  
Hickey’s eyebrows lifted faintly, eyes flickering over Tozer. Then he raised his hands, palms out and stepped away from the raised cot. He walked past Tozer towards the door and smiled still.  
He smelled weird.  
"Enjoy your visit, Sergeant Tozer, sir." Half a nod and Hickey slipped out of the door.

Tozer hurried over to Heather on shaking legs. The thin cloth covering his delicate brain had been lifted away and Tozer swallowed rigidly around the lump in his throat.  
He gently touched Heather’s forehead and then covered the wound again.  
"Sorry. I won’t let him touch you again."  
Tozer quickly checked the room, but they were alone. He bent at the waist and kissed Heather’s bearded cheek.  
Took one of his hands up in a gentle cradle and sat down on the stool by the cot. He rubbed circles into the warm skin between Heather’s thumb and the stretch of his first finger.  
Heather breathed slow and deep and didn’t move.

The next day Tozer sat with Heather and told him about life aboard the ships, beset as they were.  
Halfway through a convoluted story involving the dog and the Captain’s steward and serious Lieutenant Little Tozer could have sworn that Heather’s fingers twitched in his grip.  
He inhaled sharply, stilling to feel for another twitch.  
None came.  
By the time he left for his duties he wasn’t sure the twitch had happened at all.

"Well, that’s odd." Doctor MacDonald stood over Heather and frowned vaguely, face still friendly for it.  
"What is?", Tozer moved away from his perch by the door and nervously stepped up to Heather’s cot.  
"It seems the edges of the wound have shifted." A gentle hand ghosted over Heather’s forehead, skirting the raw edge of the wound.

Raw edge.  
It had been cauterised when they’d brought him below deck.

"What?" Tozer’s voice was barely a croak.  
MacDonald looked up and smiled tightly, grabbing Tozer by the elbow. "It seems the wound is closing. I know not how or why, but it is. Have hope yet, Sergeant."  
"Never lost it, sir."  
That damned lump in his throat again.

"I’ll keep an eye on the wound and the progress. Please keep him company as often as you can, Tozer. He needs strength now, more than anything."  
Tozer nodded and moved to straighten the pillow under Heather’s head.  
MacDonald stepped away to make a note of Heather’s progress.  
Tozer’s thumb smoothed over something cold and hard in the folds of the pillow and he pulled a carving, made in some kind of bone, out of the fabric.  
It was a crude depiction of a man’s head.  
Well, very finely done for a bone carving.  
Tozer swallowed, thinking of the small woman in her furs and pelts and her unsettling, dark eyes. Her father had had carvings in his clothes, much like this one.  
They hadn’t saved his life.  
But then he hadn’t had one of a musket or a musket ball.  
Or an Englishman.

He held the carving in his hand until it was warm, then he nestled it against Heather’s neck, the skin warm and alive to Tozer’s touch.  
Tozer was willing to go the extra mile and believe all kinds of things out here. With a spirit hunting them, maybe magic was all that could save them.  
"Bill, I’m here. Stay strong. I’m here."  
He squeezed Heather’s hand and this time there was no mistaking the tiniest flutter of movement in return.

Three days of warming the carving and settling it against Heather’s skin and the wound was noticably smaller.  
By now every doctor and surgeon on the expedition had peered at it and scratched their heads.  
There was no explaining the bone regrowing at that pace, or explaining the regrowing at all.  
Tozer couldn’t care less. Heather’s skin looked pinker every day and he warmed, his hands and feet no longer so cool to the touch.

Then there was the flutters and twitches of his hands and toes.  
If it weren’t for the example he’d set for the men, or the consequences he would face if he forewent his duties, then Tozer would never leave Heather’s bedside.  
"What if you wake and I’m not here, Bill? What are you going to do with no one here to explain to you what happened?", Tozer mumbled against the bend of Heather's wrist.

MacDonald and whoever else was bustling through the room whenever Tozer spoke quietly with Heather politely ignored his talking.  
All but Goodsir, when he visited.

He hovered by the other side of the bed and smiled in that vaguely painful-looking way he had.  
Tozer looked up from his conversation – one-sided as it yet was – and lifted an eyebrow in question. He didn’t mean to be coarse with the skittish man, but he’d never been good with men that were so unfit for any kind of tense situation.  
"What is it, Mr Goodsir?"  
"„Ah!" There was already half a stutter in that single exclamation. "I was, was just thinking, Mr Tozer, that Mr Heather here-," one of Goodsir’s pale, slender hands indicated Heather with a gentle sweep, "-is terribly, terribly lucky to have a friend so devoted."  
Tozer huffed a smile and Goodsir’s face twitched into one too.  
"S’ppose that’s true, Mr Goodsir. Sorry arse would be long dead without me."

Goodsir shuffled something in the shelves and spoke over his shoulder. "You’ve known each other long, then?"  
Tozer shrugged and sat back, one hand still curled around Heather’s palm. "Since before I made Sergeant. Three or four years, now."  
The fingers in his grip twitched firmly, pads catching on the fingerless gloves Tozer wore even indoors now.  
A small sound crawled free from Heather’s throat.

Goodsir was there immediately, carefully inspecting the wound, or what was left of it.  
It hadn’t grown shut evenly, so there was a small piece of bone still missing. _About the size of a sovereign_ , Tozer thought vaguely, as Goodsir gingerly pressed on the new grown bone and skin.  
It all had the fresh pink tinge of the new skin under a scab.

"Private Heather, can you hear me?" Goodsir’s timid voice was strong and clear suddenly, losing none of its kindness for it.  
Tozer looked between Heather’s face, the wax on his eyelids, and Goodsir’s concentrated frown.  
Heather weekly squeezed Tozer’s hand.

"Bill!" More gasp than word. "He-he squeezed my hand!"  
Goodsir took Heather’s other hand up carefully and shared an elated grin with Tozer when Heather squeezed it too.  
"I’ll see if we can’t get that wax off his eyelids without hurting him."

Tozer nodded shakily, eyes burning. He sank down on his stool and watched Heather’s throat work around a swallow.  
A swallow!  
"Bill, you just swallowed."  
The pad of his thumb dragged over Tozer’s palm.  
Goodsir stepped back up, holding a spoon in his hand. "I warmed a spoon by the lamp, Private Heather, and I’ll try to soften the wax on your eyelids. We affixed them, lest your eyeballs dry out. Please bear with it, if it is uncomfortable, I will work quickly."  
Gently Goodsir pressed the warm spoon to the first drop of wax and Heather swallowed.  
Tozer squeezed his hand and fingered the carved head with his free hand, rubbing it vaguely against the tender skin of Heather’s neck.  
"I’m here, Bill, I’m here."

"Almost done," mumbled Goodsir with a reassuring flicker of his face. He peeled the first pebble of wax gently away from Heather’s eye and warmed the spoon again.  
"Mr Tozer, please drip some water over the eye, I fear it might be dry despite the wax. It has been a long time and I wouldn’t want to cause Private Heather undue discomfort."  
"Hold on a moment, Billy."  
Tozer gave Heather’s hand another squeeze and then let go, dipping the corner of a clean square of linen into the basin of water barely kept lukewarm by one of the heating pipes.  
"This’ll be cold, Bill, sorry."  
He squeezed a bit of water out of the drenched corner and let it drip on Heather’s eye. The water ran over the curve of his lid, gathered in the inner corner and then slowly ran outward, dripping down to the pillow like a tear.

Goodsir peeled the second bit of wax away and Tozer drizzled more water on his friend.  
"Gently rub it in," Goodsir advised and poked his head out of the door. Tozer heard him send one of the men for MacDonald. He paid it no mind and instead carefully smoothed his shaking thumbs over Heather’s eyeballs.  
They were soft, the skin delicate and warm. "Remember that watch on deck where we laughed so hard my eyes almost froze closed? You rubbed my eyes too, then."  
Tozer pressed his forehead to Heather’s, hands softly stroking his temples, his face.  
"I’m just re-paying the favour, Bill."  
Heather made a soft noise in his throat, arm twitching against Tozer’s thigh.

The rest of it was a blur of people barging into the room as quietly as they could.  
The Captain was there, the Doctor and at least two lieutenants.  
Heather blinked his eyes open once, bleary and clouded they landed on Tozer and a smile twitched over Heather’s round face. Then he succumbed to sleep, or exhaustion, or simply fell unconscious.  
Tozer sat in his stool, held Heather’s hand and only noticed he was crying when Lieutenant Little pressed a soft handkerchief into his hand.

It was slow after that. Heather could barely move, so weak from lying prone for so long was he.  
Tozer helped him with as many meals as he could, knowing full well that Heather preferred the familiar face of a marine to that of another man feeding him broth.  
But it seemed that every day he regained a sliver of strength, of himself, after so long being no one at all.  
"I missed you," Tozer confessed one morning, the two of them quite alone in the room.  
Heather was propped up against as many pillows as Tozer had been able to gather around the ship. A slow smile played around his mouth, face round with the joy of it.  
"Missed you too," he croaked and dutifully swallowed the spoon of broth Tozer held out for him.  
"Did you hear what I told you? Hartnell said you might hear what I say, so I kept telling you about everything."

Heather blinked, eyes twinkling. "I think I did."  
Tozer interpreted the shaky tilt of his chin as a nod and grinned. "Private, you best not tell anyone what I said. That’s an order."  
They grinned at each other and Heather tried lifting his hand for a salute. He got it up to his chest.  
Tozer helped him along the rest of the way.

Hickey showed his long nose around Heather once more, eyes dark and shining and Tozer lifted a brow at the man.  
"Hickey, what do you want?"  
Once again that cold, empty smile.  
Tozer wondered idly if that had ever fooled anyone before.

"Just wanted to commend Private Heather on getting better. We’re all very glad he’s on the mend."  
Heather frowned and shifted forward in his bed, ready to round up Hickey.  
Tozer put a placating hand on his forearm. It was thin, muscles weakened still.

"Thank you, Mr Hickey."  
It was the kind of dismissal he’d heard the Captain use and Hickey frowned, mouth twisting out of his smile as quick as a mouse slipped into its hole. He nodded and slinked away again.  
"Unpleasant man."  
Tozer scoffed, nodding. "Once I came in here and he was bent over you, doing I don’t know what. I was half moved to strangle him where he stood. Rat."  
Heather clumsily patted Tozer’s wrist, face solemn. "Keep an eye on him, I’ve a bad feeling about him."  
It came out unusually grave for Heather, voice still prone to cracking and croaking.  
Tozer swallowed, covering Heather's warm hand with his own for a moment.  
"Promise. I won’t let him get away with anything else."

Another pat on his wrist and then Heather sagged into his pillows. His eyes drooped and Tozer helped him rest.  
He snugly pulled the blanket over his friend and pressed a kiss to his brow. To where the edge of the wound had been.  
"You have your talisman?"  
Heather mumbled an affirmative and Tozer still checked, putting a hand over Heather’s chest, moving slow in his deepening sleep.  
There was the little leather pouch he had stitched up and hung around Heather’s neck, the carved head settled securely inside.

Goodsir had smiled kindly and secretly when Tozer had shown him the little carving. "She can do amazing things," he had said and closed Tozer’s hand over the little head.  
"Keep it with you," he had told Heather and Tozer had fixed the pouch for him.

They walked out and away, not long after that, leaving the ships in the care of a handful of men.  
Tozer had overheard some of the sailors say it was barely enough men to get the ship out of the ice, should there be a thaw yet.  
He looked out over the trek.  
The last of his marines standing sentinel, Heather with a gun slung over his back and leaning heavily on an ice pick. He was wearing two welsh wigs, mended skin and bone terribly sensitive to the cold, and the headaches could lay Heather flat out, sometimes.  
For now they were good to go.

Tozer checked every day that the talisman was pressed close to Heather’s skin.  
Heather checked every day that Tozer was still as whole as any of them could be.

They walked over ice and then over shale, the sound of it following Tozer into strange, twisting dreams.  
They walked until Hickey tried to wedge an axe into the crew.  
Tozer, who had been watching, waiting, was there to step in.

Hickey might have gotten to Farr, but Tozer allowed no more than a single stab of the knife to Irving’s chest.  
By then he was close enough to lunge, to catch the slight man around his lean waist and crack his half-naked body against the stone hard enough to drive the breath from them both.  
Irving stood there, gasping, one hand pressed to the oozing wound in his chest.  
From beyond the ridge excited voices called to each other in the lilting bird-noises of the people living in these horrible lands.  
Tozer snarled at Hickey and Hickey laughed into his face, still somehow thinking he could come out on top of this all.

Tozer knocked him clear out with the blunt edge of a stone to the temple.

Then the group of natives came over the edge, catching Irving as he finally crumpled, face deathly pale.  
Hickey was slung over Tozer’s shoulder, hands and feet bound like a deer, and Irving was gentled on the fur-soft sled of the family.  
Together they trudged back to the meeting point, Hodgson pale and somehow blotchy at the same time as Tozer dropped Hickey by his feet.

The walk back to Terror camp was swift.  
The rest of it was swift too.

The hanging was explained to the Netsilik – Goodsir had told him that they were called that, and Tozer had shrugged – and they stood there watching, Irving in their middle.  
Hickey’s knife had glanced off the bone, getting no deeper than that. It would scar, but Irving would live.  
They would all live, now that they had found help.

Tozer found Heather’s eyes in the diminished crowd around the gallows and smiled.  
Heather’s cheeks were round with the smile he gave in return.

Fort Resolution was rough around the edges, but the people were friendly enough.  
They shared what little they had to share and winter passed.  
Heather grew stronger by the day, scurvy nothing they had to worry about now, but his voice stayed hoarse; perpetually as if he had just woken.  
Tozer liked it.  
The way Heather would rasp his name when he came close. "Solomon."  
"Bill."  
Their shoulders rubbed through the fur coats they had been given. Much warmer than wool and felt.

"Everything quiet?"  
A dog barked somewhere in the Fort, the wind howled and Tozer laughed. His breath a huge gust of white in the cold air.  
Heather put a hand between Tozer’s shoulderblades, heavy with his fur mittens. Then he leaned in and wiped the tears of laughter from Tozer’s lashes.  
Tozer closed the small gap between them and buried his face in the fur of Heather’s hood.  
They stood like that, arms loosely clasped around each other, until Tozer’s feet were too cold to stay still any longer.

Heather nuzzled the side of Tozer’s face and they smiled at each other.  
"Can’t believe we’re going home."  
"Can’t believe we’re going home together."  
"Well, you’re not going to get rid of me now, Sergeant. Not after you nursed me back to health."

Tozer put his hand over Heather’s chest, right where he knew the talisman lay close to his heart.  
"You’re mine now," he said softly, wind curling loose snow around their boots.  
Heather shivered, cheeks round with joy. "All yours."  
"Promise?"  
Heather covered Tozer’s hand over his heart with his own and grinned.  
"Promise."


End file.
